


Beta Run

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, No Sex, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-31 23:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17858747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Harold ran the test four times. Even at that age, Ward knew better than to whine and struggle, so he waited out the pinprick and the squeezing of blood onto the test strip and the slow reveal of results in a sullen silence.The result came back the same every time: beta.





	Beta Run

**Author's Note:**

> I WROTE A/B/O. Who am I even.

Ward was five when Harold had him tested. It was the early 90s and the kits were just starting to come into use then -- over the counter, unreliable but entirely private (unlike a blood test at a lab), with a lancet and a test strip like a diabetic blood sugar test. (The much easier-to-use lickable test strips were still fifteen years away.)

Harold did it four times. Even at that age, Ward knew better than to whine and struggle, so he waited out the pinprick and the squeezing of blood onto the test strip and the slow reveal of results in a sullen silence.

The result came back the same every time: beta.

It probably wasn't the first time that his father looked at him with that expression of cutting disdain, but it stuck in his memory. _Not good enough,_ that look said, because of something he had no control over. He didn't even understand yet why it mattered.

"Well," Harold said, "some people switch at puberty. Perhaps we'll be lucky yet."

 

*

 

He read up on it later, while laboring on homework for the accelerated courses that were supposed to induce an alpha mental state and increase the chances of coming out of puberty with alpha traits. He loathed it, but it _might_ work, he didn't know for sure. (But some part of him suspected it wouldn't; he'd been born inadequate, and he was always going to be inadequate as far as Harold was concerned. _Ordinary._ )

About 5% of the population were alphas; about 8% omegas; the rest were mostly betas, though some people were impossible to nail down without a blood test, and often not even then. The whole idea of testing kids in childhood was controversial. It wasn't possible to tell without a test until puberty, and either some people switched at puberty -- as Harold said -- or the tests weren't that reliable.

But parent wanted them; oh, parents wanted them. Alpha-track your children early, give them a head start on the cutthroat business world ... or find out they were an omega, and could never really compete against an alpha's sharper mental state and more ambitious, motivated disposition, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

At least he hadn't tested as an omega. He didn't want to think what Harold's reaction to _that_ would have been.

(Some people who tested as betas came out of puberty as omegas. Ward tried not to think about that.)

 

*

 

He was fifteen, almost sixteen, when Harold came into his room in the evening. Ward tensed all over, rigid in every muscle, and put aside the book he was reading. 

The Rands had disappeared three months ago; the search had just been called off.

"For you, son," Harold said, and set a bottle on Ward's desk with a small click.

They were, as it turned out, drugs imported from overseas, illegal in the U.S. without a doctor's prescription. Drugs to induce an artificial alpha state.

Harold stood over him while he took the first dose, like he thought Ward was going to try to hide the pills or something. Later that night, Ward read the seemingly endless list of warnings and side effects on the bottle. He lay curled up in bed and tried to decide if he felt any different: more assertive, more confident. Less like himself. 

Mostly he just felt sick and scared.

 

*

 

Joy was a natural alpha; of course she was. Confident and quick, able to dominate a room as soon as she walked into it. When she came back from law school, having grown into the confidence the genetic lottery had blessed her with, Ward found himself automatically wanting to defer to her when she was in a room. She wasn't just an alpha, but a strong one.

But he couldn't show it, of course. He had to be not just an alpha, but _the_ alpha, capable of keeping a firm hand at the reins of the company (even if he was, in reality, nothing but a catspaw for his father: the fake alpha as an extension of the real one).

It was _strange,_ taking the drugs. There was definitely an energy boost, almost a manic feeling. Confidence, aggression, impulsiveness, all the stereotypical alpha traits definitely were there. At the same time, it was a constant struggle to assert his control -- at board meetings, investor meetings; it was like people could tell on some level that he was a fake alpha and reacted to it.

He started letting Joy be the public face of the company. She was better at it anyway.

And Harold knew it. Ward knew for a fact that, drugs or not, Harold never stopped thinking of him as a beta, and never stopped trying to dominate him, except the drugs made him want to posture _back,_ which usually didn't end well.

The drugs weren't exactly safe long-term. They were performance enhancers. People took them to pass a class, ace a high-stakes job interview, win an election. The list of potential side effects over the long haul were alarming if he let himself think about it: risk of kidney and liver damage, risk of heart failure, risk of stroke.

But what was he going to do -- stop taking them?

In his lower moments, there was a dark satisfaction in thinking about dropping dead from a heart attack induced by a drug Harold was making him take. _And then you'd be sorry? Right, Dad?_

Except he didn't really think Harold would be. Not really. 

And he also tried not to think about the fact that it had been a long time since Harold had said anything about taking the drugs. Harold would notice if he stopped; that was a fact. So it wasn't like he had a choice anyway.

 

*

 

He accidentally went off the alpha drugs at one point because he didn't get a resupply in time -- they were still a controlled substance. It was miserable. The worst part was that he couldn't seem to _think_ anymore; was this a side effect of withdrawals or just what being a beta was _like?_ No wonder people wanted their kids to be alphas. He called in sick to work, told them he had the flu (it did kinda feel like it) and dug out the hydrocodone left over from the last time Harold beat the shit out of him. 

And then just never really stopped renewing the prescription for that, too.

 

*

 

And then Danny showed back up, or the person claiming to be Danny, and he'd matured into a goddamn omega.

It wasn't true that alphas couldn't control themselves around omegas. Harold said you couldn't, that anything else was just political correctness, but then, Harold said a lot of things. They had a few omegas in the company (it was good PR, these days) and generally speaking they weren't much different from the beta employees. They had a few days a year when they got government-mandated time off, but even the lead-up to an omega in cycle wasn't uncontrollable lust and aggression, at least in Ward's case; it was more like irritability around other alphas -- but not much more than usual -- and a general sense of "he smells really nice" or "stop staring at her ass."

But he couldn't deny that there was a powerful urge to dominate the _shit_ out of this Danny Rand wannabe, matched only by not-Danny's refusal to be dominated.

There was no way an omega could win control of Rand. It was unthinkable. No one would ever let him. He shouldn't even _want_ it. Omegas weren't supposed to be able to _do_ that.

And that, more than anything, should have tipped Danny off that Harold was playing a game with him, letting him back into the company. What else could it possibly be? Rand Industries' pet omega, dressed up in a suit and given a corner office just like his alpha dad.

Except in the end, Danny _was_ the one who won, and Ward found himself in the odd position of extending an olive branch, an offer of half the company and that corner office back. Their dads, two powerful alphas, used to run the company together; maybe it was fitting that a broken fake alpha and the omega who never should have gotten this far should end up running it together once their dads were gone.

Danny turned him down. Ward didn't blame him; more power to him, getting out from under the weight of Rand, of Harold, of Wendell.

_I'm going to miss Dad,_ he'd said to Danny. _Who will I blame ...?_

Who indeed.

With Dad gone, he could have quit the drug. Except ... he couldn't. Not now. Joy was gone, and a beta couldn't have held the company together. And anyway, it was what he was. _Who_ he was. Harold had built the company, and Harold had built him, half-alpha that he was.

 

*

 

He didn't find out until a year later, that night at the dojo, with Colleen and Misty out looking for Joy, that Danny had his own equivalent of the alpha drug.

"The Iron Fist turns you into an alpha?"

"Temporarily," Danny said, staring at his hand with the battered, bloody knuckles as if it didn't even belong to him anymore. "Only while I'm using it, though it lasts a little while afterwards."

Well, that explained a lot about Danny. A _lot._ Ward tried to think back to whether he'd noticed anything different when Danny used the Iron Fist, but he'd only actually seen Danny use it once, and there was a whole lot else going on at the time; what he mainly remembered now was a rain of broken glass and a splitting headache and then, of course, that moment on the roof, when he'd see the shock in Harold's eyes when his son -- his _beta_ son -- put four bullets in his chest while he was trying to kill Danny.

"I can't really describe how it feels. Well ... I guess I don't have to describe it to you. It's like all my doubts go away, like I'm full of energy and can do anything."

"Like you can think faster and clearer," Ward murmured. "Like everything makes sense."

"It's like I'm angry all the time, except it's not really anger, it's just ... feeling powerful. Like I could break the world."

It wasn't exactly that way for Ward, but _he_ didn't have a magic fist capable of punching through anything, and hell, maybe his cut-rate drug-induced alpha state was just a shadow of what most alphas got. Maybe Danny was getting the real version instead of the cut-down one.

And then Danny dropped his gaze and looked away. "But you already know this, right? I mean, for me it's ... but for you, that's normal. Natural as breathing."

Ward took a breath and opened his mouth and before he could give himself a chance to think about it, he blurted out the only thing that might help get that look off Danny's face. "No, it's not. Natural. For me," he added as Danny looked back, questioning eyes in a bruised, bloody face. "I take drugs for it."

Now Danny just looked puzzled. "I thought you were off the drugs."

"Not those drugs." And it was one of the reasons -- though just one of many reasons -- why he had so much trouble opening up to the group at the NA meetings. It was a medication, he'd told himself over and over. Medication he obtained off the black market; medication that made him faster, smarter, stronger, _better ..._ "I'm not an alpha, Danny. I'm a beta."

He had never said those words to anyone before.

"But ... you _are_ an alpha." Danny's puzzled frown had deepened. "I can tell. I mean, when you're an omega, you can _always_ tell."

"Fake." Ward looked down at his hands, clasped between his knees. "Black market drugs from overseas. I've been taking them since I was fifteen."

There was a silence, then Danny said quietly, "Does Joy know?"

Ward risked a quick look at him. "No. No one else." _Except you._

And it got him a smile, a very small one, the first time Danny had really smiled since they'd brought him back to the dojo covered in blood.

 

*

 

Ward tapered off the alpha drugs in Hong Kong.

He didn't really _want_ to tell Danny he planned to do it, but he did because he wasn't sure what was going to happen or how bad the withdrawals were going to get.

But as it turned out ... not that bad. Maybe it was just that going through acute drug withdrawal twice in recent memory had raised his bar for this sort of thing. He felt like he had the flu, sluggish and achy and miserable, and he just wanted to sleep all the time. They took it easy for a few days, and Danny (being Danny) was almost unbearably solicitous and understanding about the whole thing.

"Being an alpha really does make you sharper," he said to Danny over coffee at an outdoor cafe. He was feeling a little better, though he wasn't sure, anymore, what his normal baseline energy level was going to turn out to be. It was weird to think that so many of the things he'd taken for granted about himself in his adult life were caused by a drug. "You can see why it's so strongly associated with success."

"Hey, there are two omegas running Fortune 500 companies now," Danny said.

"Point-four percent. Wow."

Danny just shrugged. "Look, it's not like I don't understand," he said, and Ward felt a sharp sting of guilt, because _of course_ Danny understood; he was the only person in Ward's life who _did_ understand. They'd come halfway around the world because Danny was chasing an alpha high, however he wanted to put it. "I do understand, but ... you're not any less 'you' without the drugs."

How in the hell did he _do_ that? Some part of Ward wanted to blame it on Danny being an omega, naturally empathetic and all of that shit, but then it occurred to him that Danny was eerily insightful into what made Ward do the things he did just because Danny knew him that well. The only other person who'd ever known him like that was Harold.

"How can you be that sure?" he asked instead. " _I_ don't even know. I've been taking the drugs for my entire adult life. And they say that whether you're an alpha, a beta, an omega -- it's your entire personality, right there. Everything I know about myself --" He stopped, looking at his cup of coffee instead.

Danny was quiet for a little while, and then he said, "You know, back in K'un Lun, I don't think they ever thought anyone but an alpha could win the honor of the Iron Fist. The entire competition was designed to make sure of it. And I think what happened with Davos is ... it's what's _supposed_ to happen. It's why he could control it better than I ever could. He wasn't having to fight for control every minute the way I was."

Ward risked a glance at him. Danny was watching the passing pedestrians, looking distant and unhappy. Ward stretched out a foot to kick him lightly under the table, making Danny look at him.

"He was also a gold-plated _dick_ when he had it. Don't forget that." And also before, but he wasn't going to say that, not right now, about someone Danny considered a brother.

Danny smiled a little. "True. But Colleen ... Colleen isn't. And I think Colleen's the kind of person the Fist was meant for."

"A beta?"

"Not just that. A _balanced_ beta. Getting the Fist, using the Fist, didn't really change her at all, the way it did me and Davos. It doesn't send her alpha tendencies into overdrive. She can control it in a way neither of us -- me and Davos -- ever could."

Ward had to smile at this, a little. "Are you arguing with the ancient mystic wisdom of the monks, Danny?"

Danny reluctantly grinned back. "They're just people. And no matter what they claim about extinguishing the self and advancing through good deeds, most people running things in K'un Lun are alphas, just like here, because they're --"

"Natural leaders?" 

"I was going to say more assertive, on average."

"Smarter. Faster. Only need to sleep five hours a night." He really missed that last one.

"But still just people," Danny said firmly. "Not destined to _be_ anything. People. That's all."

Ward looked at him across the table and it occurred to him that in some sense, they were going to have to get to know each other all over again. He'd never known Danny without that alpha side to his personality, but so far Danny without the alpha component was pretty much just regular Danny: sweet and loyal and eager to please and a stubborn, sarcastic little shit. Even without the Iron Fist and the alpha traits that went along with it, Danny had beat a contest designed to keep out people like him, and then beat the shit out of Davos, figuratively and literally.

And as for Ward himself, who was he, if not an alpha? He had no idea. He didn't even know if he'd still be able to run the company and assert his authority over a board composed mainly of alphas. There were more beta CEOs than omega ones, but not that many more.

But fundamentally, while he didn't want to admit that Danny was right ... he didn't feel like _not himself._ He just felt like himself except tired and dragged out and a little bit achy.

Danny kicked him under the table to get his attention. "Hey. There's a tram up Victoria Peak. It's supposed to have gorgeous views and you wouldn't have to walk much. I've never been up there. Want to go?"

And he smiled back; he couldn't help it, Danny's enthusiasm was just too goddamn infectious. And it beat hanging out in a hotel room feeling lousy. "Sure."


End file.
